All that's right about America is worth fighting for

Sometimes I wonder whether I've been kidnapped from the America I know and love and forced to enter a parallel universe, where up is down and down is up.

For example, the America I know and love learned decades ago that hard times for some weren't simply caused by laziness or greed, but by things they can't control, like economic recessions and depressions; by the vagaries of floods, hurricanes and tornadoes; by the lack of educational opportunities; by the cost of foreign oil and gas; by dustbowls and river flooding; by the lack of government regulatory oversight, banking greed and skewered tax laws that favor the rich and powerful; and by the frailties brought on by the diseases of alcohol, drugs, mental illness and gaming.

In the other America, which I sometimes see myself visiting against my will, it's an us-against-them universe, with everyone in need of a helping hand up portrayed instead as an unworthy sloth simply looking for an undeserved handout. This ought to lead at least some to ask as Paul Newman's character said to Robert Redford's character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "Who are those guys anyway?"

The answer, in my case, is they are the haters of all things governmental, large and small.

Mesmerized by false tales of an America that never existed, these folks are the sad victims of the fallacies of an innocent past, fallacies that perpetuate a myth that there was a time in America when the individual, unfettered by government oversight and bureaucracy, was truly the master of his own fate, limited in his ultimate success only by his lack of heart or willingness to work as hard as the guy working next to him.

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Poppycock!

From the arrival of the Mayflower, there always has been the educated and the uneducated, the empowered and the unempowered, and the visionaries and the implementers of those visions.

Sadly, few of these new anti-government zealots realize that the America they now castigate for caring too much for those left behind once carried the flag for their grandparents and great-grandparents when they were fighting for their opportunities to succeed.

For example, the shortsighted and mean-spirited who currently are reveling in their ability to slash the food-stamp program for the poor, the head-start programs for the needy, or the WIC programs for the working poor are the beneficiaries of the eight-hour day, the 40-hour week, the work-safety laws and Medicare and Social Security.

The Republican House majority attempting to defund and demolish Obamacare does so despite the fact 78 percent of Democrats want it to remain in place, along with 53 percent of independents and 34 percent of Republicans.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is just plain wrong when he equates government food-stamp programs to "slavery."

Former U.S. senator and current Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint is just plain wrong when he says, "Medicare is un-American" and that Medicaid, "is built on the principles of socialism and collectivism," which are code words for communism.

Neo-Nazi advocate Craig Cobb and Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Tom Metzger are just plain wrong if they think the people of North Dakota are going to let them build a racist village of hate in the middle of their state.

The super-secret Koch Fund is just plain wrong if it thinks no one will notice that while it allegedly decries "corporate welfare" for business, it gives millions to prop up the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest and most powerful organization defending corporate welfare.

Tea-party leader and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas is just plain wrong when he cruelly and ludicrously claimed the guns used in the Washington Navy Yard shooting were no more dangerous than the spoon that might lead to someone becoming obese.

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